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USC 40
|Row 3 title = Participants |Row 3 info = 47 |Row 4 title = Debuting countries |Row 4 info = , |Row 5 title = Returning countries |Row 5 info = , , , , , , , |Row 6 title = Withdrawing countries |Row 6 info = , , , , , , |Row 7 title = Winner |Row 7 info = Marina and the Diamonds "Lies" |Row 8 title = Timeline |Row 8 info = ◄ Lisbon 39 Cardiff 41 ► }} Universong 40 was the 40th edition of the Universong Contest, held for the second time in England, after the winning of Hurts with the song "Stay" on the previous edition held in Lisbon, Portugal. The chosen city was Manchester, and the contest was held from May 31st to June 17th, 2012. As every ten editions, the Universong Contest is engaged in a special edition. In this ocassion, and after a brainstorm made by all the members of the Facebook group, the administrators internally decided the special theme according to the ideas exposed during the brainstorm period. The chosen theme was songs in the participating countries' national languages. As in every special edition, some special rules were released. The songs must have been sung in the national language or languages of the countries represented. The rest of the rules (no worldwide superhits, no covers, no remixes) were still inforced. 47 countries were represented in this fifth Universong special, including the debut of Monaco and Panama, while Azerbaijan, Estonia, Hungary, Ireland, Peru, Slovenia, Ukraine and Wales. Wales got its second Universong winning. Marina and the Diamonds, in her third venture in the USC won the second Welsh title with the song "Lies", scoring a total of 178 points, thus breaking its own point record of 176 points (also imposed by Wales in its first USC winning in USC 19 in Osijek, Croatia, and later equalled by Cyprus in its winning in USC 33 in Istanbul, Turkey). Even though, during the voting, it didn't become evident that, Wales would win. The main favourite was France, represented by the song "La sense de la vie" by Tal, who spend almost the whole voting in first position, even when Wales and France tied for first place at the end of the 23rd country voting. With 2 countries remaining to vote, Wales have already taken some lead closer to France,and during the last voting round, the possibility of a tie between Wales and France, or that France finally catched up finishing with a two point difference, in case the last voting country, Turkey, didn't gave points to Wales, was open, as both countries had 168 and 156 points, respectively. Even though, as Turkey gave 10 points to Wales, it was enough to secure the USC title for the British nation, with a margin of 22 points. Eventually, France came in second place with 156 points. Both songs were also the winners of their respective semifinals. In third place, Cyprus, a direct finalist, scored not only 149 points, but also the most 12 points of this edition (six) for the song "Panta ekei" by Stefanos Dimosthenous. In fourth and fifth places, Ireland and host England completed the top 5. Semifinal 1 Semifinal 2 Grand Final Category:Universong Contest